Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom;
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb. #

My friend and colleague Wood Ingham wrote the most amazing Christmas poem, one of the best things I've read all year, something I've read over and over, and something that has sent me down giant rabbit holes the likes of which I have not experienced in probably two years (and inspired this tweet). Seriously, go read it.

For music: We Three Kings of Orient Are by Sufjan Stevens.

image by Kevin Tyson of the Garabedian House Christmas Display

It's still too soon for me to go into detail about what happened prior to the paramedics arriving--suffice it to say it was really scary...I'm still dealing with that part--but, yes, about 8:30 on Christmas morning 2008, I placed a 911 call; less than 5 minutes later the paramedics arrived.

I tweeted throughout the hospital stay, and called immediate family. Penn's dad came to the hospital to pick him up and kept him while Carissa mostly slept and I mostly waited and prayed. All told, we were at the hospital about 6 hours. The neurologist's diagnosis was that it was likely Synope, with some inexplicable symptoms during, and we were happy to take an optimistic diagnosis. The ER doc still wanted to admit her, but she decided to go home and so we did, by way of Burger King and picking up Penn, who immediately tore into all of Santa's presents, the opening of which had been entirely interrupted.

At home the anti-nausea medicine they gave her was still making her really sleepy, so she slept some more on the couch and the kid (who really had no mechanisms with which to deal with the entire situation) and I tried to quietly pass the time. Eventually I think she woke up and put the child to bed after I had fallen asleep on the floor, then we went to bed very early.

Today she has been a terrible patient, insisting on doing all her normal activities and refusing all help, so I have had to watch her like a hawk. No matter the diagnosis of whatever it was that happened yesterday, there is not much to do other than to hope that it never happens again.

Carissa blogged about it here.

I remember Mary and Joseph. They were a nice couple. It took Joseph forever to finally pop the question.

You see, they met at our church, a medium-sized un-affiliated Baptist, the only church in a nothing-special midwestern town of 1277. Our town doesn't have much time for church, or for semi-stable interpersonal groupings at all for that matter. It exists primarily as a pass-through for the cattle drivers; there are stables for the old-fashioned kind and truck stops for the modern ones. One of the stables bought some bleachers in 1953 and has since hosted a mid-sized rodeo that draws a statewide crowd in June.

You see, Mary and Joseph ho-hawed for quite some time, seeing each other in church when they both showed up on the same Sunday. There seemed to be this tension between the two that suggested that if they remained in the same physical proximity for too long, flammable objects located nearby would start to spontaneously combust.

So you see, it wasn't much surprise to us church regulars when, soon after getting engaged, it turned out that Mary was pregnant. My wife and I had been trying to have a baby for years and grumbled about how it's always the people that don't want kids that have them, and the people that want them can't. There was of course a church board meeting that, despite its agenda, was almost wholly devoted to the topic of Mary's pregnancy.

For a while there you see, things became really difficult. We suggested that they go ahead with the marriage, and simply get it over with very quickly, or wait until after the birth. The problem was, however, that Joseph was insisting that the baby wasn't his. We tried to assure him that he was forgiven and that we did not judge him for his actions, but that it was important that he take responsibility for them. After a couple weeks of this, Mary and Joseph finally decided to go together to her parent's place back East to give birth to their son. They had a very simple, small ceremony at the church and left that very afternoon. There was still a slight hint of stress behind Joseph's eyes.

But you see, upon their return some months later, things seemed remarkably different. The baby was a beautiful baby boy, one whose smile could light up the room; indeed just the presence of baby Jesus, as Mary and Joseph had so oddly named him, seemed to uplift all those around. But Joseph's attitude seemed absolutely reversed. He was now a proud father, beaming about his son to any who would look like they were listening. Mary, too, had been somehow transformed into the most determined mother of the year award. We wondered if there was something magical about "back East" or if they had seen a vision somewhere on the road through Ohio, but for the most part we just shrugged our shoulders and moved on.

So you see, it wasn't much surprise to me when a little stick of a boy, Jesus, showed up at one of our church board meetings last week…

I first saw this a year ago, and if you are one of the kids still watching MTV you probably saw it what? 2-4 years ago? But, I am more in the Christmas spirit this year so I'm posting anything remotely Christmas-related that isn't cheesy. Which still isn't much.

Also, LJ has changed, yet again, the way they do object embedding, so videos are, yet again, not showing up in the RSS feed, and hence, danielsjourney.com.

I had SWIM so close to a release, a little over a year ago. It would be so nice to have back at this point.